Decoration Day was recorded Aug. 17, 1974, at "Consorting with Ives: A Musical Town Meeting," held outside Charles Ives' home in West Redding, CT, to celebrate of his 100th birthday.

The performance was the first musical collaboration between the six-time Grammy-winning Paul Winter Consort and conductor James Sinclair, a renowned Ives scholar and musical director of Orchestra New England.

Midway through the piece, two marching bands come from opposite directions to meet on stage.

Ives later wrote about the piece, which he composed in 1912:

"In the early morning of a Memorial Day, a boy is awakened by martial music -- a village band is marching down the street -- and as the strains of Reeves' majestic '[Second] Regiment March' come nearer and nearer -- he seems of a moment translated -- a moment of vivid power comes, a consciousness of material nobility -- an exultant something gleaming with the possibilities of his life -- an assurance that nothing is impossible, and that the whole world lies at his feet."
-- Charles Ives "Essays Before A Sonata" (1919)